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Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

It's surprising the extent to which legal scholars assume that state exits from the Union are a settled question. Ultimately, it's unlikely that the federal government would or even could force a state into compliance once the state government and courts have opted to treat state law as taking precedence above federal law.

We already see this with legal marijuana, there are multiple campaigns aimed to form interstate compacts without the consent of congress. Ultimately a situation where the federal government declines to enforce its legal authority will just lead to a defacto change in the supremacy clause of the US constitution.

The only situation I see where this would become problematic is if a state chose to stop sending tax dollars to the federal government. Even then, the federal government has levers to pull that would be tough for a state to circumvent except by exiting the dollar - which no state has any reason to do.

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> The only situation I see where this would become problematic is if a state chose to stop sending tax dollars to the federal government.

This is not generally how taxes work, though; instead, individuals and businesses send taxes to the federal government (and sometimes, also to their states), and the federal government returns a great deal of the money to the states and localities, directly or indirectly. Leaving the federal government wouldn't mean the states would stop sending the feds money, it means they would be completely unable to pay for all sorts of infrastructure and entitlements that they receive money from the federal government for.

The states would have to pass laws prohibiting the businesses and individuals within their borders from paying the federal taxes -- and that probably would get some sort of reaction.

But probably not a military one, the feds could just arrange for garnishment via banks. States would have to force customers to use different banks which don't do garnishment - and the feds would probably cut those banks off from the rest of the banking system.

Worst case scenario, I'd see some byzantine system of declarations required when doing something across state lines or people using "fed taxed" and "state taxed" financial institutions depending on their objectives. Given the current state of military affairs, a war over Rhode Island would be a complex endeavor - a war over Texas, California, or New York is a practical impossibility.

Yeah. The thing is, though, "the enemy" is already inside. Every state -- even the bluest ones, have red populations. Every state -- even the reddest ones, have blue populations.

The state that tried to leave might find itself with a civil war as the two sides within it -- the majority of whom already believe that the other party represents the most mortal enemy imaginable -- duke it out for control.

There are few issues in the US I see motivating such an extreme reaction within a state border for the majority of US states. The only breaking points I see are reasonably well handled through a legal decoupling of states and the federal government.

The big item issues such as

- Federal bans on abortion

- Controversial Presidential elections

- A series of unfortunate Supreme court decisions

- Immigration

- Infrastructure spending

Are all issues which can be handled with a legal decoupling. If all sides remained notionally in Congress, then there is very little likelihood that Congress would address the matter. A sensible supreme court would leave it as a political issue for a few decades before declaring a defacto status as was done for West Virginia's statehood. For all intents and purposes, a de facto decoupling would look more like a return to State relationships prior to 1900 then a secession.

While some may wish for a military based solution to stop a legal decoupling... there simply does not seem to be a plausible route for any military solution by any party. Russia made it ~100km into Ukraine before being stopped, it's 2900 KM between Houston and Boston - all means of ending such a stalemate would escalate to MAD as the military remains spread across states for political and defense purposes. Even in the civil war, the North was unable to enforce integration of the south through reconstruction.

> Ultimately, it's unlikely that the federal government would or even could force a state into compliance once the state government and courts have opted to treat state law as taking precedence above federal law.

This has been tested, and the states—consisting of a very large share of the states up to that moment in the union—testing it ultimately failed.

The federal-state balance of the relative capacities to apply force has not, in the interim, shifted in favor of the states in any way I can ascertain, in fact, those capacities have been significantly centralized in the Federal government since the last time it was tried in a large scale way, or even since the more recent, smaller scale attempts.

> We already see this with legal marijuana, there are multiple campaigns aimed to form interstate compacts without the consent of congress.

Source? There has been lots of talk of an interstate compact with Congressional approval as an alternative vehicle, and transitional stepping stone, to general federal legalization, but I’ve seen nothing about a renegade compact.

State marijuana legalization leans on non-commandeering doctrine rather than nullification.

> It's surprising the extent to which legal scholars assume that state exits from the Union are a settled question. Ultimately, it's unlikely that the federal government would or even could force a state into compliance once the state government and courts have opted to treat state law as taking precedence above federal law.

That's an interesting Taiwan-ish model for succession. It probably has a better chance of success than the kind of outright succession the Confederacy tried, because it could be conducted slowly while still paying lip service to the Union. At each small step, military intervention might seem like too extreme of an escalation.

Though it still would be difficult. At some point it would require the state citizens to start breaking federal laws in very obvious ways (e.g. stop paying federal taxes), but I doubt they'd be fine with not crossing state lines in that case. Also a lot of the money in state budgets pass through the federal government, so it would probably be really expensive to replace that without some of the more extreme steps.

Even in an extreme political separation, the integration and infrastructure of the Union is a utility for the vast majority of Americans. Californian's may want to secede, but they'll probably want to keep the Dollar and maintain a unified navy with the rest of the US. Few would be interested in the friction of having to go through customs within the US either. While we're at it.. centralized infrastructure projects are pretty useful - does anyone want 50 different highway systems?

Er, incompatible highway systems aren't really a thing even across borders. At most there are border checkpoints but it's not like the roads themselves can't be joined together. The lone exception is islands like the UK where people drive on the other side, and water marks the demarcation point.

The federal government choose to relax their enforcement policy in deference to changing national attitudes. But prior to they dealt with the mismatch on marijuana laws by... going into the states and enforcing on the business owners, basically forcing them into bankruptcy. The state may have legalized such businesses but they could not protect them from federal authority.

> The only situation I see where this would become problematic is if a state chose to stop sending tax dollars to the federal government.

When do states send tax dollars to the federal government? Individuals send tax dollars to the federal government, but states mostly receive federal money.

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